Lists and things

Out of this world's listsMy old friend, Andrew Paul, did a list of blogs over on his website that included a link to this blog, so I thought I might as well do some lists for this site as well.

The first list is a re-cycled list from one of my tumblr blogs. You can probably figure out what it’s about from the list.

  • Moonwalk One
    Theo Kamecke’s amazing documentary about Apollo 11. Not only from a technical standpoint of Apollo but also putting it in context with the rest of the era.
    Available on DVD from Amazon.
  • In The Shadow Of The Moon
    The exact opposite of Moonwalk One. A simple talking head documentary. Interspersed between answers from astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Dave Scott, Alan Bean and others is some amazing NASA footage.
    Available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.
  • The Right Stuff
    Based on Tom Wolfe’s book of the same name. The Right Stuff takes us on a journey from breaking the sound barrier to the start of Americans in space with Mercury. Possibly the first film about space to use actual space footage.
    Available on DVD from Amazon.
  • Apollo 13
    Tom Hanks is Jim Lovell in Ron Howard’s film, or is it a docudrama, about the ill fated Apollo 13 mission. Based on Jim Lovell’s book, Lost Moon.
    Available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.
  • From The Earth to The Moon
    HBO’s re-telling of Project Apollo from 1961-1971. Told in 12, one hour, episodes it covers everything from the uncertainties at the beginning, via the dark days of the loss of Apollo 1, to the success of Apollo 11.
    Available on DVD from Amazon.

Another list I did for the space blog is this one about what books I would recommend to read about NASA’s greatest missions, the Apollo Project. I have come up with a list of my top 5. So without any further ado I give you them – in no particular order.

  • Flight – Chris Craft’s autobiography of his time from Mercury all the way to Apollo and beyond.
    Available to buy on Amazon
  • Moonshot – Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton’s memoirs of their time from Mercury to Apollo. With a lot of the stuff they got up to when they were not on duty.
    Available to buy on Amazon
  • Lost Moon – Jim Lovell’s account of his time in service and NASA. Mostly it covers his time in April 1970 aboard Apollo 13. The book is available to buy from Amazon. If you don’t want to read the book then you can always buy the film that the book is based on, Apollo 13
  • Failure is Not an Option – This is the only book on the list that I haven’t, as yet, read. However, knowing what Gene is like it should be a cracking read.
    Available to buy from Amazon
  • Apollo 11 Manual: An Insight into the Hardware from the First Manned Mission to Land on the Moon – A “Haynes manual” about the whole of the Apollo system. Ranging from how they “knitted” the guidance computer to how the huge Apollo V launcher was constructed.
    Available to buy on Amazon

This final list is just a list of random websites that I like from around the web.  There maybe a plug or two for other websites that I work with.  They’re not in any order apart from what springs to mind whist doing the list.

  • Road Rash Reviews: A film review website that I help maintain
  • Silent Garfield: An experiment to show the state of Jon Arbuckle’s mind
  • British Board of Film Classification: Everything you want to know about how British films are classified as well as what any film was given.
  • Letters of Note: A wonderful blog about letters written to and from famous people.
  • Oddee: To quote from the website “A Blog on Oddities: the odd, bizarre and strange things of our world!“. Sometimes it’s NSFW
  • mekon.tripod.com: A friend’s original website that was designed in the mid 90s but has subsequently forgotten the password about a year later!
  • Passive aggressive notes: Letters and signs of annoyed people wanting to tell somebody else off for being stupid
  • Imgur: the self styled “simple image sharer“. A great way to spend a couple of hours being amazed at what people do and cats.
  • b3ta links board: A random collection of user generated links and discussions about them.  Can be a bit NSFW.
  • PvP web comic: